SA mining’s journey to zero harm – disrupted

Compiled by Sharyn Macnamara

Industry collaboration and initiatives to improve health and safety on South African mines have gained traction long term, despite regrettable periodic disruption and regression.

Although the official 2023 safety statistics and 2022 health statistics (with an unfortunate one-year lag) had not yet been released by the Department of Minerals Resources and Energy (DMRE) for South African mines at the time of writing, the Minerals Council South Africa was able to discuss the general trends in health and safety on mines as well as hone in on some of the successful industry safety initiatives at the Investing in African Mining Indaba 2024 in February.

Disappointingly, the industry experienced a regression in safety on mines in 2023. The number of fatalities increased last year, after the industry’s record safety performance the year before. Jappie Fullard, CEO of Glencore Alloys and chair of the CEO Zero Harm Forum at the Minerals Council South Africa said, “Before the single incident in November in which 13 employees lost their lives, the industry was tracking well on its path to Zero Harm compared to 2022. This was a shock for the industry, but it was heart-warming to see the industry pull together and assist the company in emergency responses and offers of support.” He emphasised that safety space is not competitive in the industry, but instead it is hallmarked by collaborative efforts by the industry to reach a goal SA MINING’S JOURNEY TO ZERO HARM – DISRUPTED Industry collaboration and initiatives to improve health and safety on South African mines have gained traction long term, despite regrettable periodic disruption and regression. Compiled by Sharyn Macnamara of Zero Harm for the industry. Fullard explained that the Minerals Council’s CEO Zero Harm Forum is a vehicle for both members and non-members driving safety initiatives with a philosophy of CEOship at the helm whereby leaders accept 100% accountability for their employees’ safety.

The mining industry had set health and safety milestones in its quest for Zero Harm in 2014 and has since shown that focussed interventions targeting the causes of fatalities, injuries and disease have gained significant traction. In the past decade, the industry – led by the Minerals Council in collaboration with the DMRE and organised labour and through company-specific programmes to directly engage employees – achieved a 42% decline in the number of fatalities with a record low of 49 in 2022 from the 84 reported in 2014. The historical leading causes of deaths and injuries – falls-ofground (FOG) and transportation-and-mining incidents (involving Trackless Mobile Machinery, TMMs) have declined by 83% and 43% respectively, while injuries have declined by 19%. Fullard highlighted that this year, the Minerals Council plans to assess the industry’s performance over the past decade (learning from what has worked) and reinvigorate successful interventions to reach its goal of Zero Harm.

Head of Safety and Sustainable Development Department at the Minerals Council, Dushendra Naidoo added, “Health and Safety is our number one priority as the Minerals Council. The Khumbul’ekhaya strategy was created to ensure we all return home safely at the end of every day. Health and Safety is an ever-continuous process and efforts in the industry cannot be undervalued. There has been a significant thrust towards improving safety and looking at it holistically. Safety is not one dimensional – there are behavioural aspects at play and complex cultural transformation is also often required.”

He noted that the industry would continue sharing and adopting global and local leading practices with frank, open discussion on a monthly basis to avoid repeat incidents (this includes the Mining Industry Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH) Learning Hub); focusing on leading indicators too, collaboration with research organisations like the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Mandela mining precinct and other institutions, even other industries; relentlessly driving changes in health and safety cultures at mining operations; and introducing modern, innovative mining methods.

Sietse Van Der Woude, senior executive of Modernisation and Safety at the Minerals Council emphasised that the collaboration with the CSIR and the Mandela Mining Precinct – South Africa’s largest private-public partnership – has improved health, safety and productivity by modernising mining through technology solutions.

One of the leading breakthroughs to date is the development of the Isidingo Drill, which is a lighter, quieter, faster and more ergonomic machine for underground drilling compared to traditional drills. It has opened the rock-drilling profession to women for the first time too. Another project whereby a scraping system coupled to a winch to remove blasted rock out of working areas is fitted with a proximity detection device to automatically shut down if it detects people nearby using is currently being tested at a major mining company. A remote charging system to remove employees from the blast charging area at the face is also currently being piloted at the Maseve test mine, a mine on care and maintenance.

The mining industry has also made significant progress in the health of mine employees. Although there was an increase in occupational diseases reported in the industry in 2022 compared to 2021, there was a decrease of about one third in the number of occupational health diseases reported by the industry in 2022 compared to 2019, which was the year before the Covid-19 pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic distorted health statistics in 2020 and 2021 as there was under-reporting, said Dr Thuthula Balfour, the Head of Health at the Minerals Council. Balfour highlighted that there has been a more than 75% decrease in occupational health diseases in the mining industry from 2008 to 2022, with declines of more than 80% in tuberculosis and silicosis cases. Although, noise-induced hearing loss cases have declined by more than 50%, this area is a major focus of intervention by the industry to adopt quieter equipment to protect employees’ hearing. [Visit https://www.linkedin.com/feed/ update/urn:li:activity:7166005192042258432 to listen to a short snippet of an interview with Dr Balfour at the Mining Indaba, where she delves in to some of the insights gained over the last decade on the health front.]

Mzila Mthenjane, CEO of the Minerals Council weighed in when the audience turned the focus on security on South African mines and the risk to health and safety posed by the latest trend in mine sit-ins and the increase in illegal mining. “We have noted with concern the increasing number of sit-ins recently and the Minerals Council is spending time trying to understand the causes thereof. Our biggest concern is, first and foremost, the safety of employees. One cannot predict these incidents and some have lasted for up to three days at a time. The risk is that employees could find themselves in situations without food and water. In these instances dehydration is a risk. Some employees have chronic conditions such as diabetes which require daily medication and being detained for long periods poses a risk to health should these employees not have access to their chronic medication. We have been fortunate so far in that these recent incidences have not resulted in a fatal, serious injury or illness. We intend to engage the unions and government, firstly to understand and align on what the causes may be, and therea fter on how to prevent and eliminate this kind of incident.”

He noted that when it comes to illegal mining, which predominantly happens in abandoned mines, one must understand that this is fundamentally different to what is called artisanal and small-scale mining, and that these should never be confused with illegal mining. Apart from taking place in unsafe, abandoned mines, illegal mining poses a risk as it is now also encroaching on existing operating mines. “Government is responding to this trend in terms of the appropriate law enforcement.” He concluded that joint initiatives between business and government on crime and corruption, as with energy and logistics challenges in South Africa, are also slowly gaining traction to counter these trends.

There will always be the potential for disruption on the road to the industry’s goal of Zero Harm, but vigilance and the effort of each and every individual involved in mining in the country must be continuous and relentless in this collaborative quest.

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